There is no argument for limiting migration between countries that could not be contrived to be an argument for limiting migration between cities.

"Our role as academics is to protect this one institution. This is why we receive tax money; why we're basically civil servants. The role of the university is even lost on many, so bears repeating: produce knowledge and educate at the highest level. AI destroys both at their core"

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ@olivia.science · 3d ago

If useful, here's my attempt to process my feelings about how I feel sadly kinda — or rather very — sick from all this AI fascist nonsense as an academic. 😶‍🌫️ I'd be pleased if even one person finds something useful because there's something to be said for processing this all together, so, um, enjoy?

Google Earth, a tool often used as a source of satellite imagery to verify photos and videos, has added a feature that allows you to alter satellite imagery with AI, for reasons. blog.google/products-and...

Android is changing, and not for the better. The software you can run on your phone and who is allowed to write it is changing. A platform that once claimed to champion openness is closing up tight. Goodbye F-droid. Goodbye open source apps. keepandroidopen.org

This has been a rough week for AI submissions at the journal, but it's also led to some reflection around why I seem to react so strongly to academics using AI to write their papers and make up references for them. 1/9

Great essay from @frhoffmann.bsky.social : "For much of the war, Ukraine’s future was shaped, or at least feared to be shaped, by Western capitals reacting to Russian manipulation of risk. Ukraine now holds the power to manipulate that risk itself." missilematters.substack.com/p/the-state-...

The State Makes the Missile, and the Missile Makes the State

The power to hurt: Ukraine's deep-strike campaign and the transformation of the Ukrainian state

missilematters.substack.com

I am really proud to ed. at a journal where we actively work to retract AI papers when we find them.

Lewis Wade 🗃️@wadehistory.bsky.social · 2w ago

Academics who discreetly email journals to inform them of academic malpractice are doing those journals such a big favour. To see those journals shrug their shoulders in response is mystifying and unacceptable. I fear the only solution might be to call those journals out publicly

The WHCA Dinner used to be an event at which POTUS was roasted by the press, which ostensibly served the purpose of reminding POTUS of the role of the news media as a check on executive power. Now it is a humiliation ritual for journalists, in which their very presence is evidence of subservience.

We really are speedrunning 20th century European history, aren't we?

Rep. Jim McGovern@repmcgovern.bsky.social · 2w ago

WE WILL STOP FASCISM. 🇺🇸

Want a @britishacademy.bsky.social post-doctoral fellowship with us? We'd love to mentor philosophers with projects on intimacy, love, and relationships. More information here: ahc.leeds.ac.uk/news/article...

PRHS Opens Call for 2026 British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowships

Prospective candidates must submit their initial proposals by 12 noon (UK time) on Tuesday 4 August 2026 to be considered for department sponsorship

ahc.leeds.ac.uk

And: if we want to debate conscious/sentient/morality then the animal-rights people are probably going to want to jump that line.

If you are papermaxxing with AI and swamping academic journals with claude- or chat-prompted scholar-like content, then you are taking the time and labour of editors and reviewers that others who actually put the work in deserve instead.

Here’s what I’m observing in AI papers: Title and abstract: these set the scene in academic jargon overdrive. You’ve never seen so much over-use of the word “epistemic”. AI-enhanced papers start jargon-heavy and keep at it, exhaustingly, all the way to just within the journal word limit. 2/

This interview with the great @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social was a "wow" moment for me. Thanks, New York Times and David Marchese. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/m... I couldn't help noticing the question that seemed the most Times-like to me.

I think this might be one of the most incredible, unsettling and symbolic photos of today’s America I’ve ever seen. I can’t stop looking at it. From Reuters, published on the Guardian website.

I don't know how I would ever get writing done without Typora in my life

Pete Birkinshaw@binaryape.bsky.social · last mo.

I also feel awkward telling professional writers which tools to use, but Markdown and git is a much safer, quicker, less distracting way to write than perfidious and faffy MS Word

Investigating the Military-Technological Complex 📍 SOAS | 📅 11 July | 10am to 4pm Join experts from AOAV, Airwars, Bellingcat, The Guardian and more for a free one-day seminar on investigating civilian harm, AI and the arms trade. www.soas.ac.uk/about/event/...

Some highlights from pics taken at South Africa's xenophobic protests yesterday.

Great letter in the LRB on the managerial university and its consequences.

Syndicate calls for the swift resettlement of Sudanese journalists under threat in Libya #RadioDabanga #Sudan

Syndicate calls for the swift resettlement of Sudanese journalists under threat in Libya

The Sudanese Journalists Syndicate has called on the UN Refugee Agency to strengthen urgent protection... The post Syndicate calls for the swift resettlement of Sudanese journalists under threat in Libya appeared first on Dabanga Radio TV Online.

dlvr.it

Dylan, on life in your 80’s, is incredible. @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2026/06/14/o...

The existence of a trillionaire is a policy failure.

"VFS now holds visa outsourcing contracts with 71 governments worldwide. (...) VFS has built an adjacent business around selling add-ons such as SMS updates, courier return services & access to premium lounges". www.lighthousereports.com/investigatio...

The Visa Empire: Borders as a Business

Outsourcing giant VFS Global has made huge profits by exploiting people around the world whose ‘weak’ passports require them to apply for visas to travel

lighthousereports.com

On the one-year anniversary of EMPIRE OF AI, I am so, so excited to announce The AI Resist List, a new project that documents examples of resistance to the AI empires around the world 😍 airesistlist.org

Fieldwork sketch of pyracantha - ubiquitous on South African highways.

I am of course biased, but if you're going to ICA, this is going to be really excellent.

Media, War and Conflict@mwcjournal.bsky.social · 3mo ago

For those headed to the 2026 ICA conference in Cape Town in June, there are still a handful of spaces for our preconference on the challenges to contemporary conflict reporting. We'd love very much to see you there! www.icahdq.org/mpage/ICA26-...

The thing about research which AI will never do, can't do, and wouldn't do a good job of even if it could do it, is that reading your citations can let you discover something that one person said sixty years ago that nobody ever picked up on, but that is revelatory, even sublime.

10/10 cover.

The Continent@thecontinent.org · 3mo ago

All Protocol Observed Welcome to Issue 239 of The Continent Macron is back in Africa: energetic, ambitious, and still trying to convince the world Paris is relevant. Meanwhile, in Mayotte — legally France, geographically Africa — asylum seekers wait for la République to notice them. bit.ly/239_TC

THREAD: So you may or may not recognize this little girl, but it's timely to learn about her now, as Iran's Hormuz deadlock is pushing desperate regional & global powers towards alternative trade corridors. This is Ciham Ali Abdu, an American citizen. She hasn't been seen or heard from since 2012.